a suppression of the book in question, or at least an arrest of its influence. Indeed, in these Orders of Council, not even a vote of thanks is recorded for his pains on the present occasion; while for his reply to Salmasius, as we shall presently find, that compliment was studiously paid to him, though not the thousand pounds with which the controversy has hitherto been supposed to enrich him. But to resume the subject of the Icón. A suspicion that this book was not written by the king had been excited, before Milton published his Iconoclastes, by the author of a work, entitled "Icón Alethinè, &c. published to undeceive the world," early, I believe, in 1649. The object of this writer is to impeach the title of the king to the Icon Basilikè, and to assign it to a nameless divine. Thus Mr. Hayley says of Milton, that "the sagacity of the poet enabled him to discover that the pious work, imputed to the deceased king, was a political artifice to serve the cause of the royalists; but as it was impossible for him to obtain such evidence to detect the imposition, as time has since produced, he executed a regular reply to the book, as a real production of the king, intimating at the same time his suspicion of the fraud." His suspicion Milton has expressed in

i The full title is, “ Eikwv ’Aλŋ0ɩvn, The Portraiture of Truth's most sacred Majesty truly suffering, though not solely; wherein the false colours are washed off, wherewith the painter-stainer had bedaubed Truth, the late King, and the Parliament, in his counterfeit piece entitled Eikov Baσıλin. Published to undeceive the world. Lond. 1649."

more instances, than those which have been cited by writers who treat his suspicion as of no account. Yet Clarendon, who doubtless had read the offensive Iconoclastes with attention, apparently regarded these instances; and therefore when he wrote to bishop Gauden, who seems to have been the author of the Icón, he could not but acknowledge, that the poet would be pleased by the discovery which would confirm his suspicion. But a heavy charge has been brought against Milton of having, in conjunction with Bradshawe, prevailed upon the printer of the Icón to interpolate a prayer, taken from the Arcadia of Sidney; with the view, it has been pretended, of bringing discredit upon the book. Yet, however severely and sarcastically Milton has reflected upon the memory of the king, he certainly added not this alleged insult. Justly has Dr. Newton observed, "I cannot but hope and believe that Milton had a soul above being guilty of so mean an action to serve so mean a purpose; and there is as little reason for fixing it on him, as he had to traduce the king for profaning the duty of prayer with the polluted trash of romances.' For there are not many finer prayers in the best books of devotion; and the king might as lawfully borrow and apply it to his own occasions, as the Apostle might make quota

As I have endeavoured to shew in a Letter to his Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1825.

'The same application to the case of St. Paul is made, though it probably was not known to Dr. Newton, in the Eikv 'Akλaoros, The Image Unbroken, an answer to Milton's Icono

m

tions from heathen poems and plays. And it became Milton the least of all men to bring such an accusation against the king, as he was himself particularly fond of reading romances, and has made use of them in some of the best and latest of his writings." The king too, Dr. Newton might have added, is said to have been particularly fond of reading the " romance from which the prayer is taken; so that Lauder, in his miserable endeavour to convict Milton of the interpolation in question, is himself convicted, among other contradictions, of inaccuracy in stating with Mr. Wagstaffe, "that it does not any where appear, that Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia was a book which the king used to read, or delight in " for, in 1693, Mr. Long of Exeter, a zealous royalist, expressly asserted, "I have heard that the king for his recreation did divert himself by reading that book, (Sir P. Sidney's,) the best of its kind then extant; and he did it with great observation and improvement." But Milton is at once exonerated from the supposed imposture, which Dr. Birch also discredited, by the connection of Archbishop Juxon with the prayer which has been no

clastes, in 1651. "By borrowing to a Christian use the words of a heathen philosopher and poet, did Saint Paul thereby unhallow and unchristian Scripture ?" p. 82.

m His Majesty, in the time of his restraint, had also Ariosto, and Tasso, and Spenser, and the romance of Cassandra, among his books; as Sir Thomas Herbert, in his Memoirs, informs us. King Charles I. vindicated, &c. 1754, p. 32.

n.

Dr. Walker's Account of the Icôn Bas. examined, p. 59.

P

imme

ticed. For the complete editions of the Icon present, in the title-page, "The Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majestie, &c. Together with his Private Prayers used in the time of his restraint, and delivered to Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, immediately before his death." The favourable reception of the first copies of the Icon, without the prayers, occasioned in the impressions of the book, which were daily passing through the press, diately after the martyrdom, the introduction of whatever could be collected, and might be judged proper, as illustrating the pious character of the king. And these prayers, which with other papers had been delivered by his Majesty to Juxon, had been taken from the prelate at the time of the murder of the king. The name of Juxon, we may be sure, would not have been united with them, if it had not been true that the royal martyr gave them to him. Nor would Juxon for ever have been silent, if the prayer from the Arcadia had not been one of them. The answer to the Icon, which leisurely, and amidst other avocations, Milton had thus produced, became an object of consideration to the Council, in March 1650-1, as to reprinting it; and

q

P With the prayers, the Icon was published certainly not very many days after the fatal 30th of January. Of twenty-nine impressions without the prayers, seventeen are said to have been printed in 1648-9. With the prayers, twenty-seven editions have been enumerated.

225. 66

As related by Perrinchief in his Life of K. Ch. I. 3d ed. p. They forced from my lord of London all those papers his Majesty had delivered to him."

accordingly a second edition by authority appeared. Yet still no direction for remuneration is found; while the order for a translation of it into French, soon afterwards, repeatedly couples with it the expression of reward.

"1651. May 20. Ordered, that Mr. Durie' doe proceed in the translating of Mr. Milton's booke, written in answer to the late king's booke, and that it be left to Mr. Frost to give him such reward for his paines as hee shall thinke fitt.

"1652. Nov. 15. Ordered, that it be referred to Mr. Thurloe to consider of a fitt reward to be given to Mr. Durie for his paines, in translating into French the book written by Mr. Milton, in answer to that of the late king's, entitled His Meditations.

John Durie, a Scotchman; by profession a divine, in orders, and a preacher; but whether he took them according to the way of the Church of England, which he always scrupled, A. Wood says, it appears not. He was a great pretender towards reconciling the Calvinists and Lutherans abroad, and is said to have been encouraged in his labour by Archbishop Laud. Wood refers to a letter of Durie to Hartlib, who was his friend, in which some of his history is to be found. In 1641 he sided with the Presbyterians, was a preacher before the Long Parliament, and one of the Assembly of Divines. Afterwards he joined himself to the Independents. He survived the restoration. See Wood's Ath. Ox. Fast. vol. i. col. 849. ed. 1691. He is the author of many publications. In his letters to Tho. Goodwin and Philip Nye, published in 1644, he relates "the true state of his negotiation with the Lutherans," &c. p. 1, et seq.